Foreign Ministry's press releases

The Ministry for Foreign Affairs is making preparations to expand and strengthen the network of Finnish missions abroad. A new embassy will be opened in Doha, Qatar. The embassy would commence operations at some point later this year. The Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs has informed that the country will establish an embassy in Finland, too.

The Council of the European Union has appointed Ambassador Terhi Hakala to serve as the EU Special Representative (EUSR) for Central Asia, starting on 1 July 2021.

EU Foreign Ministers will convene in Luxembourg on Monday 21 June. Finland’s representative at the meeting will be Minister for Foreign Affairs Pekka Haavisto. The main topics on the agenda are Belarus, Iraq and Latin America. The Foreign Ministers will also exchange views with Minister Fuad Hussein, the Foreign Minister of Iraq, and the Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. The current affairs to be discussed include Russia, Yemen, the Middle East Peace Process and relations between the EU and Turkey.

Suomen tulee vaikuttaa ja ottaa nykyistä enemmän vastuuta globaalin ruokaturvan ja ruokajärjestelmän vahvistamisessa. Erityistä huomiota on kiinnitettävä kaikkein köyhimpien maiden ja haavoittuvimmissa tilanteissa elävien ihmisten ja ryhmien aseman parantamiseen. Tätä mieltä on Kehityspoliittisen toimikunnan KPT:n asiantuntijaryhmä, jonka analyysi ruokaturvan ja ruokajärjestelmien tulevaisuudesta julkaistiin perjantaina.

Ministers for Nordic cooperation will meet under the leadership of Minister Thomas Blomqvist in Porvoo on 21–22 June 2021. The Ministers will discuss cooperation in times of crisis and the implementation of the common Nordic vision. According to Our Vision 2030, the Nordic region will be the most sustainable and integrated region in the world by 2030.

On 17 June 2021, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) issued a decision declaring inadmissible an application against Finland, after considering that the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) were not applicable to the application and that the applicant had not exhausted all domestic remedies.

Minister for Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade Ville Skinnari will visit South Korea on 15–19 June.

Finland will chair the session of the Conference of States Parties (COSP) to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) on 15–17 June 2021. Representatives from more than 180 countries are expected to attend the Conference, which will be held both virtually and at the UN headquarters in New York. A large number of representatives of civil society organisations and UN agencies, dedicated to promoting the rights of persons with disabilities, will also attend the Conference. Finland’s delegation will be led by Minister for Foreign Affairs Pekka Haavisto.

For the first time, Finland has been ranked number one in an international comparison of sustainable development. The esteemed ranking by the UN and the Bertelsmann Foundation is published annually, and Finland has also been in the top three in earlier years, together with Denmark and Sweden. The comparison assesses countries’ progress on implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals.

In this year’s municipal elections, 2,684 persons voted in Finland’s missions abroad. The number is higher than in the municipal elections of 2017, when the total number of voters abroad was 9,500.